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The Art of Electronics
Price: $55.79

 This is the book that started it all for me... Back in the 1980s... (which is the First Edition of this book). It was the summer after 6th grade and I saw this at the bookstore. I opened it and couldn't understand a thing written on it. I remember thinking "this is great... I don't understand any of it. By the time I'm finished with the book, I'll know about them." Three years later, I was already building 100watt transistor amplifiers, preamps with bass/mid/treble and loudness circuits with built-in phono preamp, stereo expanders, etc... This is the book that made me want to be an engineer. So that's what I took in College.

About the authors:
Paul Horowitz is Professor of Physics at Harvard University, where he teaches physics and electronics. He originated Harvard's Laboratory Electronics course, now in its 25th year. His research interests include observational astrophysics, x-ray and particle microscopy, optical interferometry, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He is the author of some 200 scientific articles and reports, has consulted widely for industry and government, and is the designer of numerous electronic and photographic instruments.

Winfield Hill is Director of Electronic Engineering at the Rowland Institute for Science (founded by Edwin Land), where he has designed some 250 electronic instruments. Recent interests include high-voltage RF (to 15kV) and precision high-current electronics (to 6000A). He was formerly at Harvard University, where he designed over one hundred electronic and scientific instruments; he then founded Sea Data Corporation, where as chief engineer he designed some fifty oceanographic instruments. He has collaborated in numerous deep ocean experiments, and has authored a dozen scientific and technical articles.

The history of the book according to the authors
The Art of Electronics started life as a set of notes for an electronics course, Physics 123, taught in the Physics Department at Harvard University since 1974. We chose this course number because we wanted to teach "all of electronics" in one semester -- that is, "1-2-3 Electronics".

We first tried a few textbooks, of the "electronics for scientists" variety, but were unhappy with them all. None seemed to offer the intuitive "back-of-the-envelope" approach to electronic design -- that we favor. So we started writing (literally: in pencil, on paper, by hand) a set of "notes". (click here for a sample page.) These grew to some 200 pages, and acquired considerable popularity. People wanted copies, even if they weren't taking the course.

After xeroxing a few hundred copies, we decided that there was a need for a real book, one that explained how real circuit designers design circuits. The scope of The Book (as we called it) grew enormously, with a large-format first edition of some 700 pages, extended to over 1100 pages, 1000 figures, and 80 tables in the second edition.

* 1125 large format pages
* 80 component-selection tables
* 1500 figures
* extensive practical advice
* back-of-the-envelope techniques
* exhaustive 4000-entry index

Getting Started in Electronics
Price: $16.96

This is a short book... and more like a crash course in electronics. If the 1,125 pages of The Art of Electronics SCARES you, start with this one!

The author is Forrest Mims, another well known author in the electronics world... up there with the likes of Horowitz. He has written several books and circuit scrapbooks. It's always interesting and a learning experience looking at his projects. The author teaches you the basics, takes you on a tour of analog and digital components, explains how they work, and shows you how they are combines for various applications. Includes circuit assembly tips and 100 electronic circuits and projects you can build and test.

A reviewer at Amazon said it nicely...

I cannot overstate the impact this book has had in my life.
My dad bought me a copy of this book when I was in 7th grade.
22 years later, I'm working in the electronics industry, and I keep my original copy handy for reference or explaining electronics concepts, and I regularly buy additional copies to give to coworkers and friends who need a crash course in electronics. There are some other books (_The Art of Electronics_ for instance) that I hold almost as dearly, but while I'm sure people can come up with flaws in this book, it's been on my shelf for more than half my life.
It literally got me started in electronics.

Look at that... this reviewer just like me started in 7th grade... and yes, it has started our love for Electronics.

Active Filter Cookbook
Price: $32.97

This Don Lancaster classic is by far the best-selling active filter book of all time. It gives you everything you need to know to build active lowpass, bandpass, and highpass filters.

An active filter uses op amps, resistors, and capacitors. Advantages include lower cost, easy tuning, simple design, and modularity. Lancaster's Active Filter Cookbook includes practical elements such as working circuits, ready-to-use design tables, tuning, and real-world applications, making it easy to use and apply. You'll find both instant design and the mathematics behind it.

What can you do with it?

Build Filters! What else? EQ circuits, low-cut, low-pass, high-cut, bandpass, etc... now you can build your own dream EQ that rivals the EQ found on big mixing boards.

Craig Anderton's Home Recording for Musicians
Price: $16.47

Okay, this is not a book about Electronics but this is the book that started me with recording and home studios. It explains the basics and assumes you don't know squat anything about recording, or what a compressor is, reverb, delay, etc...

I highly recommend this book. Yes, the pictures and screenshots are of vintage sequencers... but the underlying principle and explanation is still the same.

The author is Craig Anderton... well known musician, engineer, writer... Just Google him to learn more about all his accomplishments.

The Audiophile's Project Sourcebook: 80 High-Performance Audio Electronics Projects
Price: $20.37

What's the whole point of DIYing???? THE PROJECTS YOU WANT, FOR LESS. Have fun building them and save money too. Plus knowing you're using a custom-built gear puts that something "special" in your music.

Balanced input driver/receiver circuits
Signal conditioning techniques
Voltage amplifiers
Preamps for home and stage
Tone controls
Passive and active filters
Parametric filters
Graphic equalizers
Bi-amping and tri-amping filters
Headphone amplifiers
Power amplifiers
Speaker protection systems
Clip detection circuits
Power supplies
Delay circuits
Level indicators
Homemade test equipment

Practical Electronics for Inventors (Paperback)
Price: $39.95

Sometimes, after so much reading about electronics, you just get the itching to DO SOMETHING! Enough theory! Let's do something.

Guess what? This is the book for you! Now, don't get me wrong... this book gives good, easy-to-understand theories (but not too deep) on the "whys" and "how" it works. If you want to learn electronics in a practical and hands-on manner, this is your kind of book. The book explains how each component works, and how the circuit functions. Of course, some basic knowledge of electronics is still useful, so if you don't have that, check the first 2 books I've listed above.